Okay - I will try that.

In my house, it's also sometimes the cat's fault, or mine really, for leaving the remote on HIS couch.

Here's a question. Since the iPhone SDK needs an Intel Mac, I'm toying with the idea of buying a Macbook Air. Has anybody got one? As they any good?

Well, they've only been shipping over a month, hard to tell if there are any major flaws.

Other than needing a separate optical drive, or borrowing one from a nearby computer over the network, it looks like a fun machine.

Thanks for the GnuCash rec, DX. I was just looking for something like that.

Liquid ledger looks good.

I wish I were tough enough for the gnu cash installation. I feel like a wimp. But with all that I've got going on, the shortest, flattest learning curve is the way I must go.

Turns out that the quickbooks copy I have is NUE (new user edition) which seems to be less complex.

This may be a Natter question, given all the accounting savvy folks we have. If so, I will move it.

As a sole proprietor who has been bleeding money for the last few years (and turning that around, please all that is holy) my personal accounts ARE my business accounts...mixed personal and business expenses on all my credit cards and bank accounts.

Is there a simple strategy within accounting software to make this work?

Truly, nearly all my outgoings, except for food, are business related...even my rent, as my office is in my home.

perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can comment about the difference between quickbooks and quicken, but I have used quicken for years (literally, since 1990) and I have found it to be quite suitable for most of my needs. I do not own a business, however.

the categories in quicken can really help you identify business vs. personal expenses. I just categorize all my business expenses as such and run a report when it is tax time.

Bonny fides, obviously you can use the same bank accounts and credit cards if you wish, but you do somehow have to find a way to enter just business transactions into your books. I presume you know that "business related" is not the same as "legit business expenses". For example there are are standards for what percent of your rent is allocated to your business based on how much room your business takes up in your home. (There are also IRS standards for what is tax deductible, but these are different from cost accounting.) Umm as I said, you probably know this, but the way you phrased it made me think a reminder would not hurt.

To make your life easier, you might check with your credit card company. You know how you can a spouse or a kid or whatever to your credit card account? Some credit cards will let you add seperate card for business purposes, where transactions on that card show up differently on the statement. Also if you know what percent of your expenses are business related, you could divide your line of credit into two cards: almost any credit card company will let you do that.

For checks, I presume you have no trouble keeping track of business as opposed to personal spending in one checking account. If your business has grown to the point where this is a pain, and it is really generating substantial revenue (as in enough income to constitute anet hourly wage), you might want to check with your bank: maybe they can find a way to make a second bank account inexpensive and convenient - with one of them drawing on the other so that the combined balance is always available from at least one of the accounts.

Is there a simple strategy within accounting software to make this work?

Probably the easiest thing to do is categorize all your personal expenses as Equity Draws - money that you pay yourself as owner. They don't reduce your profits, they are what you pay yourself out of profits, if you see what I mean. If you want to track your non-business finances also, you should do that separately.